초록 ▼

The outer surfaces of hollow fiber membranes in a skein, or a bank or cassette of stacked skeins, are kept essentially free of solids by maintaining a substantially uniform flow of a stream of coarse bubbles through each of plural orifices in an aerator disposed beneath the fibers. Aerators for skei

The outer surfaces of hollow fiber membranes in a skein, or a bank or cassette of stacked skeins, are kept essentially free of solids by maintaining a substantially uniform flow of a stream of coarse bubbles through each of plural orifices in an aerator disposed beneath the fibers. Aerators for skeins used in microfiltration of wastewater in a tank are periodically flushed when their air orifices are fouled, by injecting a flushing fluid into a fouled aerator. The flushing fluid may be a two-phase mixture of flushing liquid and air, or flushing liquid only. The flushing liquid may be permeate, clean water or wastewater (substrate). When air is injected into the flushing liquid flowed to an aerator for less than 5 min, preferably less than 20 sec, the flushing fluid produces discrete masses of liquid which are flowed laterally through the body of the aerator, cleaning its walls and maintaining the orifices essentially free from plugging. When only flushing liquid is flowed through the fouled aerator for less than 5 min, preferably less than 20 sec, the flushing liquid is highly effective to keep the air orifices clean.

대표청구항 ▼

[We claim:] [1.]interrupting scrubbing gas while said aerator is flushed with a flushing liquid only;periodically injecting flushing liquid into said aerator through a conduit means connected thereto within an injection period of less than 5 min so as to flush said aerator's plenum with a single pha

[We claim:] [1.]interrupting scrubbing gas while said aerator is flushed with a flushing liquid only;periodically injecting flushing liquid into said aerator through a conduit means connected thereto within an injection period of less than 5 min so as to flush said aerator's plenum with a single phase of flushing liquid flowing laterally therethrough in a mass flow sufficient to cleanse fouled air orifices in said aerator;maintaining flow of said flushing liquid for less than 5 min; and,returning loosened solid deposits from within said aerator into said substrate; and,re-establishing flow of said scrubbing gas.